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Why not just a voters ransomware? Lockdown the computer except for access to the voting tool, activate day-of, and it lays the stakes out: vote for our guy or s
by csydas 9y ago
Why not just a voters ransomware? Lockdown the computer except for access to the voting tool, activate day-of, and it lays the stakes out: vote for our guy or say goodbye to your data.
You don't need a physical presence to coerce, it's simple to click and deploy, and even easier to Target phishing sites when you know what people are looking for.
I easily believe that an interested party would drop big cash on a good exploit for such an event.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoBecause that would be easily verified, and the election would be thrown out. The attack wouldn't accomplish anything.
- dfee 9y agoThis is a tactic used to maintain power - delay elections indefinitely. Currently it’s happening in a number of African countries. Undermining the credibility could therefore accomplish “everything” (the intended purpose).
- bryanrasmussen 9y agoI'm pretty sure if I get the election thrown out and smear my likely to win opponent as someone doing this kind of tampering it's all good.
- jpalomaki 9y agoBeing able to sabotage elections and force a rerun might be an accomplishment for somebody. For example a foreign entity could use this to cause confusion and undermine people's trust in elections.
- zaarn 9y agoAnd you think nobody would report that to the police?
- csydas 9y agoGranted, but people already report ransomware to the police with little to no effect. Businesses held hostage with their entire livelihood report it and still end up paying most of the time. The resolutions come month later typically. I'm not against the idea of trying to modernize voting or blockchain in general, but there are extremely practical and real problems that come with it which are a magnitude easier to accomplish than it is with paper ballots at the moment. I'm sure there is a procedural medium which alleviates this but I'm not bright enough to think of it at the moment.
- rtkwe 9y agoThe effect would be to hopefully have the election rescheduled. In this case actually catching the people isn't necessary to make the attack useless because the final goal is to compromise the election which can be prevented without trying to break the ransomware or find the perpetrators at all which is why reporting it to the police usually does nothing. Also the stakes are a lot higher than the usual ransomware so unless the government itself is trying to break the election the police have a much large incentive to get involved.